Fading Out
by Verboten Byacolate
Summary: Am I really breathing, or just gasping for the air I don't need? Oh. Never mind. I'm not gasping at all. [Sasori tribute][Spoilers for Shippuden 27]


_A/N_; Inspired by Sasori's death. Watch me turn emo now.

_Disclaimer_; I do not own Naruto, nor am I making any profit from this work of fanfiction.

Dedicated to Molly.

* * *

**Fading Out  
**

_I walk a lonely road_

_The only one that I have ever known_

_Don't know where it goes_

_But it's home to me and I walk alone  
_

* * *

My childhood was non-existant. 

It's only because I preferred to tinker with wooden parts of people. Of course, the parentless child with an odd addiction to people's limbs wasn't exactly the first to be picked for tag or anything. I didn't care, of course. The living were a hindrance. Puppets couldn't betray you or leave you or be killed by the White Fang of Konoha and other pathetic hindrances. They didn't have hearts to end the beating of. They didn't have bones to break. Their limbs could be easily repaired- mended to your satisfaction.

And if it was your will, they would always return to you.

* * *

_I walk this empty street_

_on the boulevard of broken dreams_

_Where the city sleeps_

_And I'm the only one and I walk alone_

* * *

I didn't much care for baa-sama's sympathetic hues of the same sad blue-gray as her hair. Her chakra had turned the very same, colorless shade for months after her blatant lies of 'just sent for another mission'. I much preferred my own deep red hatred-color that bled through after the truth was made clear. 

Then the hobby became the obsession. I no longer wished to remember-- I wanted only to forget.

* * *

_My shadow's the only one that walks beside me_

_My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating_

* * *

The Akatsuki meant nothing to me, really. I did become stronger, and I was able to further hone my skills as an artist by joining them. But I had no real attachment. Not to the Orochimaru cretin. Not to Leader-sama. Not even to the blond twerp whose vision of art was the opposite of mine. They were simply puppets whom I was unable to control, for their strings were not mine to pull. I was alone. 

My world consisted of me and my marionettes. They were the ones that would dance under me.

I was destined to watch the ones I did not control leave me.

* * *

_Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me_

_Till then I'll walk alone_

* * *

Sixty some years. It was kind of funny, you know; I'd thought that I would live forever. It's even more comical who had defeated me in the end-- my feeble grandmother and a little girl. It's only truth, I suppose, that life is as ephemeral as it looks to a real person. It was pitiful that I was just the same in the end. But really, who was I to care? I had lived long enough, and my end was inevitable this time. 

Does this happen to everyone? Do other "people" share these thoughts? Are they all so calm at the gates of Hell? Or am I still unique?

Who knows. It's too late to find out, as if I was ever curious before.

* * *

_Read between the lines_

_What's fucked up and everything's alright_

_Check my vital signs to know I'm still alive_

_And I walk alone_

* * *

Am I really breathing, or am I just gasping for the air I don't need? Oh. Never mind. I'm not gasping at all. 

There's the last bit of life in me, and I can feel it ebbing away with my vision. Why am I giving the girl what she desires again? What has she given me but an eternity without my art? I don't know. I don't care. Maybe I've gone soft with all of the poison seeping through my life source.

What an absurd speculation. I wonder if I'm going mad in my death.

I wonder if anybody cares...?

* * *

_I'm walking down the line_

_That divides me somewhere in my mind_

* * *

After a short explanation of the man who had been my partner all of those years ago, I feel like laughing. But I find that I'm too tired. I think I have been for a very long time. 

Everything is fading out; memories, faces, names, and... hatred.

I'm tired of hatred.

Grandma Chiyo. Mother. Father. Forgive me.

I

forgive

you...

* * *

_My shallow heart's the only thing that's beating._

* * *

Their arms are open.

And I breathe again.

* * *

_On the border line of the edge _

_and where I walk alone._

* * *

_**Fin **_

**

* * *

**

**Lyrics: _Boulevard of Broken Dreams_, by Green Day. **

**I cried so hard when Sasori died. And that "shallow heart" line up there gets me every single fucking time.  
**

**-Bya**


End file.
